Watch Bryan Cranston, Colbert Ponder Female God, Crying Manatees
A female God, parallel universes, good and evil, crying manatees: These are just some of the “incredibly deep” subjects explored by Bryan Cranston and Stephen Colbert during Thursday’s episode of The Late Show. The duo gazed at an artificial night sky on a fake hillside for the hilarious, introspective segment “Big Questions with Even Bigger Stars.”
“Do you believe in parallel universes?” Colbert asks the acclaimed actor in the above clip. “No,” he responds. “And somewhere, I just said yes.” (Moments later, he observes a “cluster of stars [that] looks like Ryan Seacrest.”)
“Stephen, what if God’s a woman?” ponders Cranston, on-hand promoting his new film Trumbo. “If God’s a woman, she definitely didn’t write the Bible,” the host cracks. “Ever think that God’s an old man in a robe?” the actor responds, bringing Colbert to this far-out conclusion: “No, I think he wears an ‘I’m With Stupid’ T-shirt with an arrow that just points at existence.”
Elsewhere, the pair wrestle with the existence of good and evil – which are tattooed on Colbert’s knuckles – and Cranston admits he doesn’t anticipate getting into heaven: “Not after what I did in Tampa” (a possible reference to the Florida shoot of upcoming drug lord movie The Infiltator).
The deepest question of all could be, “What’s the most tragic thing that could happen?”, with both reflecting on the animal kingdom. Cranston picks “a puppy who grows up to be a police dog and is forced to attack his brother, who was adopted by a drug dealer,” with Colbert choosing “a manatee who cries, but no one knows because he’s underwater.”
Cranston ends by sharing his biggest fear: the familiar concern “that someone will find out what I did in Tampa.”